Handango has released some predictions for the smartphone market in 2007, and predictably it predicts the smartphone market to do very well. It does offer stats to back up most of the claims, though… to summarize:
- Smartphones Will Go Mainstream — “Approximately 123 million units are forecast to be shipped worldwide this year, giving smartphones almost a 15 percent share of the mobile phone market, according to tech research firm ABI Research.”
- Mobile TV Will Hit the Small Screen in a Big Way — “Live and streaming applications MobiTV, HandiTV and PocketStreamer were all launched in 2006 and quickly broke into the top 40 best-selling titles for the Pocket PC platform. Fourth quarter revenue for these three applications alone is projected to increase 63% over the previous quarter.”
- GPS-Enabled Location Based Services (LBS) Will Be Killer Applications — “According to ABI Research, subscribers using GPS-enabled location-based services will total 315 million in five years. “GPS” is now the most popular search term on Handango.com”.
- Smartphone Adoption in Europe Will Continue to Explode — “Research firm IDC expects that from 2006 until 2010, shipments of converged mobile devices in Western Europe will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 49.3%, the largest of all regions across the globe.”
- Over-The-Air (OTA) Downloads Will Grow at a Faster Pace — “Content downloads occurring from Handango’s on-device storefronts increased 186% year-over-year, and Handango expects that growth to increase even more in 2007.”
- More Professionals in Vertical Markets Will Rely on Smartphone Content — “Handango reports that revenues for the top four medical applications for Pocket PC have grown more than 25% from 2005 to 2006 and remain an often-requested type of content.”
- Large Consumer Brands Will Create Content for Smartphones — There’s no real backing given for this apart from a few large brands doing it this year, but I guess it’s a no-brainer that at least some large consumer brands will do this.
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